I was thinking... when the mage draws evergy from the land, he won't suck it up and spit it out quickly in one second. The mage would need to take time drawing from the land...even a little bit of time, waiting until he has drawn enough energy for a spell.
A good example is Goku from Dragon Ball Z and his spirit bomb.
He must wait, drawing energy from an outside source until his attack is 'ready.'

Basically, there is some time that needs to take place from when he starts drawing for the spell until he has the spell ready. This time gets shorter as with experienced he gets better at it. There is another time factor and it also improves with experience. It is the amount of time one *can *spend doing something. For example, an unexperienced warrior can fight for only a few moments while an experienced warrior can fight for days.

Apply these two factors to our mage:
1)there is the amount of time it takes him to draw a certain amount of energy from the land.
2)there is the amount of time he can spend in one go drawing energy from the land


He gets better at both these factors as he gains xp.
The second one is the trickiest. There is third and a fourth factor, but those are easy and I'll quickly explain them:
The third is the percentage of energy he can draw from one hexegon.
The fourth is the amount of hexegons he can draw from. As we've said, the mage should 'gobble' from more than one hexegon, perhaps from the hexegons in a circle around him.
The fourth is easy because the amount of hexes he can draw from is however big his magic sight circle is. In the beginning of the game it might be 1 or 3, and towards the end it might be 27.
Maybe there is a math thing in the computer that adds the total value of all the magic thats available to him in X amount of hexegons and shows it as one number on the screen.


sigh..I'll go way off of Divine Divinity now in saying that this game would be best with turned based fighting..
I haven't played many turned based RPGs but I'm thinking something like fallout.
besides my opinion that turned based would:
enable strategical use of the land much more
make each movement important, as would be best since movement and positioning due to the value of surrounding land would be key
make each hexegon's value a lot less trivial

We could much more easily work with units of time perhaps incorporating an ap pool for movement and an ap, or 'mp' pool for magic instead of yanking the magic off the ground and throwing it immediately.

There is a Magic Point pool for magic.

He would apply an amount of Magic Points for a spell. The amount of magic points he would need to use from his Mp pool for a certain spell would mean the time at his current level it takes him to 'get the spell ready.' This ability would get better over time as he would not have to use up so much 'time', or MPs due to his growing mastery of mana-drawing.
Eventually it would only take him a few tiny moments to draw for a powerful spell and then have it ready.
The MP pool itself would get bigger with experience as well.
This growth means the amount of time he *can *spend in one go on drawing from the land getting bigger.
There is no MP bar or guage to deplete. The amount of magic he can draw from the land is infinite. He doesn't need to recharge his mana: his 'go' ends and he must wait.


Action points are units of time. Each point represents however many seconds of movement. Magic points then are units of effort-time. Focus effort, or magical mental effort. Each point represents however many micro seconds of neuro-movements.



Showing the magic on the land:

Having only graphical clues to tell the player what kind of magic is on the land would be less than useful. The player may want to know exactly what magical content is where. He may want to utilize the land precisely, strategically. Both clues, such as arid desert for fire magic, in addition to a specific indicator of the magic in the land might be better.

Here are some ideas for showing the magic on the land graphically.

A circle w/ small transparent numbers:

Imagine a slow pulsing circle of color which shades the ground.
A visible circle whose center is the charachter and pulses outward from the charachter. It stops at however many hexegons outward the charachter is allowed to see due to his current ability.
Slightly above the circle are transparent numbers. A number eg. +4 or -2 above each hexegon
which is the exact value of the magic in the hexegon.

A transparent color/shade would represent
type and depth of magic in the hexegon.
There would be different colors for the different types of magic..brown for earth, orange for fire, grey for ash, etc.
Different depths of color would generalize the exact value of the magic in the hexegon. For example, light brown for +2 or less earth energy and dark brown for +15 or more.
This pulsing circle would be visible around the charachter only when in battle mode, because that would pretty much be the only time its needed.
Of course, there could be a toggle option.

I agree, if this is 'magic sight' then it would best be purchased, earned, amplified early on in the game. Either that or the ability should level up in sinc with the challenge of the game/importance of using the land precisely.



But I guess it doesn't matter at this point.


Maps:

In addition to the circle there is a map which generally shows magic content in areas in the world, using the color codes ala the air pollution data view in Sim City.
This map could be tied into in-game lore: a map some magician-magical-energy-explorer-map-maker NPC gives you.
Or, the charachter can get several maps, showing magic content of only portions of the land, from varied sources. From merchants, or NPCs who have something to say about how they got their map and about their adventures. From the ground during a quest. There aregeneral maps, cheap and easy to get. Standard maps. And the detailed, rarer, expensive maps which show an area's magic content in very helpful and precise detail.

These are maps with colors to precision, that may even have hand-written notes linked to hand drawn circles drawing attention to areas of the map and specifying what kind of magic number-values to excpect or what type of monster lurks there.
The player might aquire a hand-made map that, once he gets there and battles, he sees the magic has totally changed.
There would probably be no maps for certain tough areas and none for most hidden areas.


Seeing the maps:
To elimate the clutter of so many maps aquired there could be an automaticly updating incomplete map which applies the maps the player has collected.
Perhaps the 'general' maps are the ones applied to the world map, and the specific maps are applied to portions of specific areas on the world map.
These specific maps could be acessable by clickable buttons on the world map over the area that the map is for, buttons that are updated as maps are found.
Or, the world map could be just like the world map in Divine Divinity, one that zooms in three or four different levels and reaveals different levels of detail. It could by default show the land without magic, and then one pressess a button and it shows the land with its magical content and color, each zoom in showing more and more magical detail. The closest zoom portrays the magic content of the land with enough precsion to be useful in battle. All maps of course show the location of the avatar.